The ‘godfather of A.I.’ leaves Google
The A.I. pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who in 2012 helped create technology that became the foundation for today’s A.I. systems, yesterday joined critics who have said that tech companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chat bots like ChatGPT.
Dr. Hinton said he had quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than a decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he could freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he said.
The technology industry is perhaps at its most important inflection point in decades. Industry leaders believe the new A.I. systems could be as important as the introduction of the web browser in the early 1990s and could lead to breakthroughs in areas like drug research and education.
Concerns: Since OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT in March, hundreds of technology leaders and researchers have signed open letters warning of the risks of A.I. or calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new systems because A.I. technologies pose “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Can A.I. read minds? In a recent experiment, researchers used large language models to translate brain activity into words.